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Saturday, August 3, 2013

LIPS RENDEZVOUS AUGUST 7



The Live Poets Society (LiPS) meets on the first Wednesday of each month. Poets and lovers of poetry are welcome to listen and to read and share their works and discuss poetry in all its varied forms and uniqueness.

At its next gathering, LiPS will pay tribute to friend and colleague Nikki Kirby who was tragically killed in a motor accident at the beginning of July.

Nikki Kirby’s good friend and mentor, Graham Vivian Lancaster, has chosen Truth as the evening’s theme and he will read her poems from Words in Emotion, her first published anthology which contains poems about the wide spectrum of human emotion and experiences.

Kirby grew up in Swakopmund, Namibia, and went on to study acting and presenting for film and TV in Cape Town, After her studies she started working as a presenter on the radio, first in Namibia and then in South Africa. Apart from hosting her radio show she was also a voice-over artist.

Dr Amitabh Mitra of Poets Printery, a small publishing house based at East London, salutes her memory: “Nikki Kirby was one of South Africa's most promising young poets. Her words steeped in conviction made poetry change tracks and come out of classrooms of English Literature. Yet strangely South African poets did not feel the disappearance of one of them, one of their own, in such a violent trajectory of unseen words. In a world further divided by smaller worlds where a poet’s origins are questioned repeatedly even before the poems are read, I feel sad for such South African Poets whom we had published yet remained constrained akin to the previous era”.

The LiPS meeting will take place at the Collective on August 7 at 17h30 for 18h00. Admission is free. The Collective is situated at 48b Florida Road, Greyville, Durban (entrance in 4th Avenue). There is a cash bar so patrons are asked to refrain from bringing alcohol or fizzy drinks.

More information from LiPS Convener Danny Naicker on 083 282 0865 or email dnaicker@metsond.co.za